I too stand in awe.

This Post was wonderful-- Bravo to both you and the unsurpassable Conrad ("where rain relents and lents again").

In Central Asian studies some of the leading scholars (Pelliot, de Rachewiltz) have a usable knowledge of 15 to 20 languages (possibly more in a purely etymological sense), but Bailey surpasses that.

He was a giant. I am particularly aware of his contributions to the study of Khotanese, but I'm aware that's only a small part of his contributions. I believe the obituary by R.E. Emmerick, who was sadly lost before his time, is also worth perusal.

Eeeww.

They have neighbours in Australia?!!

Is Erasmus the Erasmus or just Darwin?

The Erasmus; according to Wikipedia, he "stayed at Queens' College, Cambridge, and may have been an alumnus."

Wow. Awesome. I had no idea...

his last recorded words, "'I think I shall write this up when I come out; it should make a small monograph'."

This phenomenon does occur a bit more often, though. Alfred Sherwood Romer, who will probably be sold to you as the greatest vertebrate paleontologist of all time, published papers all the way to his death, then published a paper posthumously the next year, and then his students published another paper from his apparently legible notes...

In Classics and IE studies, enormous linguistic resources are not unusual. Apparently Walter Burkert is a living example, and, as far as working knowledge goes, so is M.L. West. A real mind bender is Calvert Watkins' ''How to Kill a Dragon''. Bailey comes from both sides.

But it's true, Central Asian Studies lean towards that too. Étiemble, who was nonetheless a maverick, is quoted in a borgesian memoir as saying a Sinologist must necessarily know all the scholarly european languages (with russian included, if memory doesn't fail), and also korean, japanese and more than one dialect of chinese. If it's of interest to anyone, he also said in that conversation that Marcel Granet couldn't speak or understand a single word of any dialect of Chinese. He relied heavily on translations and on some working knowledge of ideograms.
(thanks for the post)

To do a good job on what I'm studying (Chinggis Qan), I'd need to know English, French, German, Russian, Chinese, Mongol, and Persian. I'm two and a half short. (Japanese and Turkish would also be useful, and maybe Tibetan.) For the western Mongol empire I'd need to add five or six more languages

Chinggis Qan would be the chap we ignorant peasants call Genghis Khan, I suppose?

That's the one.

He didn't care what you called him, as long as you surrendered your city without resistance.

I just happened to run across a reference to Bailey, who collated Tibetan, Saka, Turkish, and Persian references to the Tokharians.

Central Asia is like Heaven for people who like to do this kind of work.